So, I went to Ottawa on Wednesday, for Danielle's
birthday and general mayhem. Mayhem did indeed ensue, and
it would appear that some
people'schildren are blaming
me. I'll admit that I was a little tipsy at the
time, but I'm having a very hard time conjuring up a memory
of either of those folks telling me to stop ordering
drinks.

As amazed as phil was by my
ability to get moving in the (barely) morning, I was
stunned to discover that girl was already long gone by the
time I woke up. (Which is to say that she had vacated the
other bedroom, you sick little monkeys.) She's a
better man than I, or something.

Got to Montreal around 3pm, to find the office in a
relative shambles as people prepared to move to the new
place. Retreated to my hotel
for a bath, some P.
J. O'Rourke and then real, actual work. Dinner with
Adam at ``Lele da Cuca'', a nice little Brazilian/Mexican
place on Mary-Anne just east of St-Laurent, was good, and
so was the sleep that followed. 10 hours later, I'm a new
man, but the office is still a shambles.

We're all getting kicked out of Mothership in the
afternoon, so I guess I'm not getting much done today,
either. (Actually, I do have an interview and a handful of
planning meetings, but I haven't really adjusted to the
attitude that meetings can be productive and useful.) Maybe
finding an apartment? People in Waterloo should go see mang talk about Mozilla, and visit our booth at the career
fair: the career you save could be your own.

Update: I am a ``moderately sub-par husband''
today, according to my moderately above-par wife. Something
about not wanting to wait an unbounded amount of time for a
piece of pork to be cooked to an indeterminate level of
doneness. I'll keep you posted.

Dad arrived at 0800 to take Tyla, Steph and I to visit
with the grandparents. Aunt Jill and Uncle Bill showed up
too, which was nice. A pleasant morning, all in all, though
I was yet again reminded of The Press Event. I keep telling
myself that it'll seem less surreal as time passes, but
current trends are not promising. I really wish I managed
to spend more time with my family. Hrm.

Spent Wednesday to Saturday on one of those trips to
Montréal. One month in, and I'm still dazzled by the
sheer
coolness of the company, and people, and technology,
and...you get the idea. A few smart friends were in town to
visit, and that
was much fun. (I can't tell you who they are until they
come to their senses and join the company. Only a matter of
time, I hope.) It's always nice to see smart people agree
with me about how cool Zero-Knowledge is, since it makes me
more confident that I haven't been high for two months or
something.

Travel is tiring. I need to find a place in
Montréal, so
that I can at least stop having to ship clothes around. (I
left my cell-phone charger in Montréal, too. Being
dumb is
tiring.) It would be nice if it was possible to spend some
time in Montréal without smelling like an ashtray
afterwards. Maybe I should just start smoking cigars or a
pipe. As long as tobacco smoke is going to kill me, it
might as well be my own.

On Friday, DoubleClick
caved and said it would delay plans to correlate online
activity with ``real life'' identities. Definitely a
positive move, but lingering doubts
remain. It's not that profiling is inherently evil --
blinded demographic data or pseudonymous,
partitioned-identity systems could arguably be more powerful
-- but it's easy to see how people are getting that
impression. Someday, DoubleClick will thank us for making
them grow up and protect the rights of their users.
Someday.

(It really doesn't make me feel much better to read
things like this from the attorneys who might well be suing
to improve DoubleClick's privacy policies:

Granholm continued to level criticism the company failed to
disclose to
Internet users it is ``systematically implanting''
electronic files on the
hard drives of users' computers - known as ``cookies'' in
tech parlance
- without their knowledge or consent.

Policy is obviously necessary, but it's also obviously not
sufficient.)

We're going to be moving into the righteous new offices
next week, if all goes according to plan. Well, Development
won't move for a while, but it's still major progress. I'm
looking forward to actually having a desk, so that I can
stop squatting in Austin's office.